The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela

by Eva Golinger, Saul Landau (Foreword)

Perhaps no world leader is better placed to challenge the global authority of the United States than Hugo Chavez, the populist leader of Venezuela. As the head of one of the world's largest oil-producing countries, Chavez has been instrumental in raising world oil prices, undermining the control and profits of the multinational oil companies, and introducing innovative plans to use the wealth from this natural resource to help the impoverished-rather than the already powerful-in his own country and around the world. As the popularly elected president of one of South America's largest democracies, his strong resistance to the Bush administration's Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has severely set back, if not derailed entirely, the US's long-held hemispheric agenda. When in 2005 Bush ally and Christian fundamentalist Pat Robertson called for Chavez's assassination ("It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war"), public outcry forced some Was that, in fact, a CIA goal? Did the US have plans to invade Venezuela (as Chavez alluded to receiving intelligence about on Nightline in September 2005)? And exactly what was the extent of US knowledge of or involvement in the April 2002 coup against Chavez? (He was back in power within two days, after 250,000 took to the streets in Venezuela to protest.) Venezuelan-American attorney Eva Golinger and journalist Jeremy Bigwood have used the US Freedom of Information Act to obtain government documents about US intervention in Venezuela. The Chavez Code contains this irrefutable evidence that, at the very least, the US knew about the plot to overthrow Chavez before it happened. The history of US interventions across Latin America, the suspicious blacked-out lines and pages, and the ongoing investigation suggest an even darker tale.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published May 30, 2006

Reviews

[Virginia · Rating 2 out of 5]

so, i'm not sure what to think about this book. i'm fairly disposed to believe that the u.s. has intervened and continues to intervene in venezuelan politics. finding definitive proof of this wouldn't surprise me at all. what was actually surprising to me was how unconvincing i found the information in this book. reading the exposition section, i became more inclined to agree with gollinger--reading that much rhetoric and that much inflammatory prose might be off-putting at first, but it wears you down after a while. once i got to the documents section, however, everything that had seemed clear became much less clear to me. the evidence that gollinger had used to claim that the u.s. was pleased with the instability in venezuela seemed, when read in context, to be just a simple fact-finding document, outlining the basic situation in the country. the intelligence that gollinger claimed was proof that the u.s. knew about and was even coordinating the coup seemed, again, like the educated guess-work that anyone concerned with venezuelan politics might have made at the time. i don't contend that these impressions prove that the u.s. wasn't involved. i'm just saying that the evidence seems less strong to me than it was presented in the book. perhaps the book would have convinced me more if gollinger had made a weaker claim--that the u.s. was funding various venezuelan political organizations in a manner that was deeply inappropriate and that contributed to unrest in the country. as it is, i'm not convinced of her stronger claim--that the u.s. orchestrated the coup attempt and has been actively engaged in destabilization of venezuelan politics ever since. i'm not saying that that claim isn't true, just that i don't think it's been proven in this book.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

"La novia de Venezuela" tells why daddy is the best leader one could have.

[ylin002 · Rating 4 out of 5]

lately, chavez is looking less and less...uh, on the good side. i wonder what eva is thinking.

[Mohamed Awada]

Highly informative of how neo-imperialism works in Venezuela. This book is not of the same caliber of The Open Veins of Latin America, but it is just as useful.